[Marcus]

Well said Hobbes.

[Mirikon]

Of course you are allowed to suck. Just like other people are allowed to not want you in the group because you suck.

As others have said, part of the problem is that, because of the progressive karma costs still hanging around like a sacred cow, when it comes to your primary job, what you do at chargen is pretty much as good as you're ever going to be, unless you somehow manage to not suck long enough to survive and get enough karma together to up your totals (especially when you might be looking at several months' worth of weekly games to increase your dice pool by a single point). If you suck after chargen, you're probably going to continue sucking for the foreseeable future, and that's dragging your team down.

Look, it is the same as the special snowflake stuff. Sure, you can be an albino elf changeling with cool adept powers or a free spirit or drake or a sassy AI, but Shadowrun does NOT revolve around you! If your fun interferes with the group's fun, then you need to either cut that shit out and leave it in your fanfiction, or find a group that is on the same wavelength as you.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Yeah, the only 5E character I've taken a skill beyond 6+specialization with is my Decker.  And that's only because higher end Hosts have dice pools way bigger than elite NPCs do.

Plus, "Jack of all Trades" is pretty much required from a min-max point of view for Mundanes.  And it penalizes going beyond 5 skill.

[Michael Chandra]

You need 14 karma to raise from 6 to 7, so not sure why that would cost a dozen sessions. I know that after GMing a dozen Missions, I just threw up my Intuition from 5 to 6 and raised my Longarms from 6 to 8. I'd chargened enough specializations.

[AnotherUser]

Am I wrong for this?

Absolutely not.

In fact I don´t think there is a `wrong`way to have fun. As long as everyone involved is having it. But if there is a discrepancy between you and your fellow players´ expectations that is going to be a problem.

But there are many, especially those with a fantasy RPG background, who are used to build up their character from the beginning. SR basically puts you in charge of a level 8+ character from the get go. (Sometimes with a `level 1 player` at the helm, a frequent source of hilarity.)
If you´ll forgive me a lame comparison, some people are interested in instantly jumping into the heroics at the battle of Minas Thirith (sp?) while others are interested in how the characters became heroes in the first place and would prefer to go through the Fellowship of the Ring first.

I'm running into difficulty with finding an online group.  It seems the online groups are uninterested in growing a character. 

Adjusting dice pools up or down isn´t hard fot the GM. The implied arms race is illusionary. But he has to know. As do your fellow players. Everybody coming together and talking about their expectations for the upcoming campaign is maybe the most important game session. Even a PbP would profit from having such a conversation via TM/discord etc.

Also consider that nobody forces you to actually play a group of shadowrunners. If you buy the `total badass proffessionals` trope then consider going for a group of gangers, police officers or heck, even wageslaves. A pair of devil rats can be quite the challange if all you have is a taser and a rolled newspaper.
But it´s no fun for anyone if two wageslaves and a ganger get dragged along while the million-nuyen Cyborc tries to infiltrate an Aztech Teocalli, because `that´s the run the GM prepared.`

Campaign concept is maybe one of the most underestimated aspects of roleplay.

-------------------------------

But if finding people who share your love for the early game proves hard, why not have both? (And eat the cake too.)

Try suggesting to play preludes with your PCs. Maybe it is the story of how they got to know each other. Or how regular, law-abiding people were dragged into the shadows by personal tragedy, an uncaring, cruel system or by choice? Or maybe the defining moment that marked them for the rest of their life (and let them acquire all these perks and vices)
Make these preludes opt-in. Play individually, in pairs or with the whole group, depending on who is interested.

And then, having had an introduction that caters to the (familiar) allure of building up a personality, you can jump forward a couple of years, when the chars are already experienced shadowrunners. This way the heroic minded players don´t have to slog their way through stuff they don´t like and you get that build-up you were looking for.

Play level 1-2 and then jump forward to level 8-10, so to speak.

[Strill]

The problem you run into when you try to start out with a 'flawed' character and work your way up, is that the game's character creation and advancement works against you. Chargen can easily give you 1100 karma worth of stats, but when you finally get into the game, you're stuck inching by on a handful of karma per mission. That means if you weren't good at chargen, it's gonna take you a really long time to get yourself up to snuff from mission karma rewards. That problem is compounded by the fact that Priority gives you more bang for your buck when min-maxing than with a balanced spread, so your RP-build is probably getting less overall karma worth of stats in general.

If you wanted a game that supported starting out with "flawed" characters, you would want a system that starts you out with less karma from the onset, gives you more karma from missions, and ensures that all players start out with the same overall karma value. Alternatively, another way of doing it would be to start out with a low-powered chargen, but then get large installments of karma for the first few missions to round out your character, eventually tapering down to the standard karma rewards.

[Michael Chandra]

My Missions character was flawed by not starting with Reaction Enhancers and without skill specializations, so after 3 runs he finally had +3 Reaction for a decent defensive dice pool and +2 on several skills.

[Hobbes]

If you want to RP a "flawed" character why does that have to have some kind of mechanical representation? 

You want to play the young, plucky, just starting out, fumbling through with luck and determination... play that.  Make the character with high Edge and good stats and RP that kind of character.  You're still mechanically effective, and have your desired RP hooks.

Mechanically bad Shadowrun characters, generally, are characters that over-prioritized Skills and then spread out the stat and skill points.  Really that is the big trap you need to avoid.  Pick your main stat, max it out, pick the three most useful skills for that stat, max them out.  In Priority Gen you've got Nuyen, Magic or Edge.  Use whichever one you got to make those three Dice Pools better.  Do whatever you want with the rest.     

12+ Dice Pools with your primary thing is really easy, no reason to not do that and grow your off skills.

[kyoto kid]

Is no one allowed to suck in SR?
I'm a long time gamer, my gaming background is wide ranging.
Over the years I've grown to enjoy two aspects of TTRPGs.

I enjoy the RP, stepping into the mind of a character for a couple hours a week is a joy.

But more so, I love building the character but not in a CharGan capacity(though that is a ton of fun).
I enjoy building the character in game.  I often make my characters very advanced, how I want them to eventually be, and then reverse engineer that to 1st level, or 0 karma, or the equivalent for whatever game I play.

This means my characters are flawed in some way.  Often intentionally, so that I can take my unsure new runner who's ready for his first outing into the shadows, and grow him into a badass over time.

I'm running into difficulty with finding an online group.  It seems the online groups are uninterested in growing a character.  It's as though the mentality is, "If you can't take out The Aztechnology Headquarters on your first run then why bother playing at all."

I know SR is a lethal game, but sometimes a flawed guy gets through it by luck and wit, stumbles through a run or two, then becomes invaluable through growth.  I enjoy the challenge of playing a little above my paygrade at first then growing into the paycheck.  Those are the games I want to play.  If I wanted to be a combat god right out of the gate and faceroll my way through missions I'd play WoW, lol.  Am I wrong for this?

SR has always operated from the assumption that you "start" your career well beyond where many/most RPGs have you start.  Yes, you're already established and you're already "elite" at what you do.

Most, if not all, editions have had optional rules where you can start as true noobies.  For SR5, see the Street Scum campaign on pg. 350.

Personally, I think it's awful easy to go overkill and make a one dimensional character.  16 dice is enough to buy hits and auto-succeed on a Hard test (threshold 4), and is a good 3 or 4 more dice than NPCs typically oppose you with.  But players will often give in to the temptation to build ever higher dice pools. I'd rather have lots of 12s than one or two 16+ dice pools, because sometimes whatever it is you over-specialized in just won't be applicable to the task at hand.  Or even more likely, the other players just prefer to do some plan that doesn't rely on your uber skill(s).

...that's my Jack of all Trades Missions character Leela.  She started with a number of pools at 10 - 12 and three at 15 (Demolitions, Sneaking, and Automatics).  As I ran her, over the years I had her pick up new skills, both Active and Knowledge, to where she can do a number of different things, converse in several languages, and is very helpful in legwork.    I love it when the GM asks does anyone have First Aid, is able to handle a boat, can crack that maglock, knows about Bug Spirits, can speak French, or turn on the power to the facility, and I raise my hand.  She rarely if ever takes the lead but is great at supporting the rest of the team.

[Chalkarts]

Yes I enjoy flawed characters, but you must understand....

The experience of role playing allows us to play and pretend to be the things we are not and could never be.
I'll never be a wizard, 
I'll never be a street sam
I'll never be flawed 
I play flawed characters because it gets exhausting being perfect every day.  Sometimes I just want to unwind and pretend I'm not spectacular.   




Now as we return to reality, I can see why it might annoy the team if I had some kind of terrible flaw just for funsies(Which is why I'll probably never have Gremlins, it seems like an entire run could be blown by that). 

As for the specializing at start broadening over time, I like to continue specializing over time, which is why i sometimes go overbroad at creation with sever skills, I very much like skill wires or Jack of all Trades to help with my off skills, I like my dice pools for my specialized skills to start off ok/decent and then become really hard to roll without a bucket, it's Karma intensive but it's so much fun.

I have gained a better understanding on this topic and thank you all for your responses.
/close (Moderator?)

[Reaver]

Part of the issue is that the term "effective" is not a defined term in the game, and thus people throw in their own interpretations of what "effective" is.

Look in this thread. many people are using the word "effective" and then assigning a dice pool to it.... and in this thread that number seems to be 12. lets look at that number...

Why is 12 the "magic number"? Why is it not  8? or 6? or 23?
To get a 12 dice requires a skill of 6 and an attribute of 6.... both max stats for a starting character/human. (no, you can't count on modifiers from equipment, because this is too broad a topic, with too many variables...)


And i'll tell you flat out; At some tables I have played at, if you showed up with a 12 in your primary skills, you would not be long for this world, as the GM thought gutterpunks should be throwing 20 dice with a holdout, let alone what the Cops or Security could throw down (30+)!

And at other tables, 12 in your primary skills would mean that you'd never have to improve them again, as you were already effectively untouchable.


Most tables naturally come to a middle ground where a certain number of dice is expected, be that 8, 12 or 23, after a few games together. Usually either the players adjust to the power level of the GM's games, or the GM adapts to players.

(I'm famous for my 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, 5/3 dice pool power trick... where I base the dice pools of the NPCS based of the average dice pools of the party.... So if the party decides to rock out to an average of 30 for combat skills... suddenly the NPCS have 10, 20, 30, or even 50 dice too! But if they all show up with 12 dice in combat skills, the NPCs have 4,8,12, or 16 dice.... I find that in causes players to make more "rounded" characters instead of Mr. Potatoes...)

Online games are probably the worst Often you don't know the other players, or the GM. You have no idea what they are expecting, or what to expect. And unless you all agree to something before hand like "Missions play rules only" you can have a some... interesting experiences! Like poor Kat9 from the forums who through she was joining a serious SR game... only find out it was basically Freakshow central mixed with furry porn

But you are right, there is nothing that says you can't have a disadvantaged character in relation to the rest of the party. (be that through lack of karma, or just lack of skills, or an RP decision) In my long standing game that I play in, there an 10,000 Karma difference between my character and Technomancer in the group. (because she remade her character when we transitioned from 3e to 4e. And under our tables rules that means you go back to 0 karma!) and she has been an effective member of the team ever since, despite the deficit in karma.

My advice would be to keep looking for a group. It will take some time, but eventually you will find one that you click with and everything will work out.... I hope.